“It’s quite incredible. He’s just so very lucky,” said Lisa Paulson, a visitor safety specialist for Banff National Park. “He didn’t lose consciousness. He was relatively uninjured, except for ankle injuries and bruising elsewhere.

“No one can really believe it.”

Mount Lefroy, together with Mount Victoria on the continental divide, forms the spectacular backdrop to the view of Lake Louise from the Chateau Lake Louise.

The steep western slopes of Lefroy were the scene of the first fatal climbing accident in North America when, in 1896, American Philip Stanley Abbot fell to his death in his attempt at the first ascent of Lefroy.

In Saturday’s incident, Paulson said the Calgary climber initially tried to save himself from the fall with his ice axe, but it got pulled from his hand as he tumbled down the 45-degree slope of rock, snow and ice.

“There was nothing to really stop him from falling or sliding so he tumbled down about 400 metres,” said Paulson. “He was trying to slow himself down with his crampons and he finally came to a stop, where the slope angle changed and where there’s more snow, and that slowed him down a bit.”

The climber would have needed to go another 100 metres or so, and on a slightly different trajectory, before going over the Death Trap, a notorious narrow gorge on the Alberta side of Abbot Pass.

The man’s climbing partner could do nothing but watch helplessly as his friend tumbled, but over the next two hours, and fearing the worst, he climbed down to his friend.

With his friend’s help, the climber crab-crawled and slid on his buttocks as they traversed and headed down toward Abbot Hut, an Alpine Club of Canada hut nestled in Abbot Pass between Lefroy and Victoria.

Somewhere along the way, Paulson said they were met by another climbing party in the area, who managed to raise the alarm on a cellphone around 4 p.m.

“He was nicely mummied in blankets inside the hut and they had taken really good care of him by the time we got there,” she said.

There were fears that rescuers wouldn’t be able to get a rescue helicopter into Abbot Hut, built at an elevation of 2,925 metres, because of windy conditions and deteriorating weather.

Paulson credits Alpine Helicopters pilot Chris Robertson with some expert flying that allowed them to get to the climber that day and to waiting paramedics from Banff EMS in Lake Louise.

“Abbot Hut is a notoriously difficult place for us to land with the winds up there, and the visibility further complicates things, and so we weren’t even sure if we would be able to land there,” she said. “Chris Robertson was the real hero. He did some really good flying to get us down at the pass.”

Not only that, Paulson said the climbing party managed to dig out a snow-covered heli-pad and make sure the landing flag was clearly visible.

“It was a tremendous effort all round,” she said.

Paulson and rescue partner Brad White quickly assessed the climber, but wanted to get him out of there as some bad weather was creeping up from the Death Trap.

“We quickly carried him back to the helicopter and flew him and his partner to the Lake Louise warden office,” she said. “The Banff medics were waiting and gave him a better assessment. He was fine. It’s amazing.”

The man was taken by ambulance to Mineral Springs Hospital in Banff and later released.

Postmedia NewsCathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook